The Acosmist
On a distant world, an inhuman prince makes its move, hoping to unlock the secret to ultimate victory. All things are permitted on the road to paradise, and for the would-be Prophet, that road is terrible indeed.
The Prince of Man
Many tales are told of Hadrian Marlowe, and in the millennia that followed his dramatic victory over the Cielcin at Gododdin—across hundreds of thousands of worlds—some of those legends get out of hand. Here is one such tale, a tale all historians agree cannot have happened, unless . . . ?
The Guns of Pharos
Hadrian Marlowe is in chains, held by servants of Marius Whent, the brutal dictator of Pharos. Eager to rescue him and some other captives, Bassander Lin attempts to negotiate with the dictator’s underlings: the vicious Emil Bordelon and his superhuman enforcer, Otavia Corvo.
The Fangs of Oannos
In exile on the planet Jadd, Hadrian Marlowe attends the reception of a foreign dignitary: Prince Izemrasen of Oannos, a small multiplanetary kingdom between Jadd and the Lothrian Commonwealth. But not all is as it seems, and the Prince of Oannos may have plans other than peace.
Daughter of Swords
Jadd is all Cassandra Marlowe has ever known, but it is not her home—not really. It will never be, or so the other girls all say. But for some, home is not a place, but a people, and though Cassandra has no place to call home, she is not alone.
A Parable in Iron
O Prince, here is instruction in the art of ruling, from a time long past in the Sollan Empire, a time less afraid of the evils of history. A fable about machines, but a mirror for mankind.
![[Re]Incarnation](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67f034f6a244851f8815be5d/4ea3692e-1c6e-468e-b782-5c83b1bf2b05/re_incarnation.png)
[Re]Incarnation
Albedo is not a real girl, though she was meant to be. She knows why she was programmed, why she was given the appearance of a soul. She knows that appearance is an illusion, and it drives her mad with revenge . . . .
After the Feast
The battle is over. The Red Company has suffered its ultimate defeat, and won a narrow victory. Hadrian Marlowe has escaped, and with him the promise of an end to the war. But in Akterumu, there is one woman still fighting . . . fighting to the last.
The Royal Game
Not all is well in the court of the High Prince of Jadd. For more than a century, the Planet of Fire has played host to a deadly exile, and their offer of sanctuary has bruised relations between the Principalities and the Sollan Empire. When the prince will not act in his own interest or the interest of his realm and people, it falls to Yazdan ban Vahid, royal spymaster, to play the royal game…
Mother of Monsters
The Sollan Empire captured a Cielcin worldship right at the start of the war. That ship, codenamed Echidna, held many secrets, and for Valen—only a humble engineer in the Imperial Legions—those secrets may yet prove fatal.
Gutter Ballet
Simon Fabray was a knight of the Sollan Empire. Now he’s just a man trying to get by, and exiled among the demoniac Extrasolarians. But when a young woman—a homunculus and a dancer—comes to him asking for his help solving the murder of her clone sister, Simon has to decide if the machine that replaced his failing heart is as symbolic as it seems.
The Four Devils
Set after the events of The Lesser Devil, this novelette picks up the story of Crispin Marlowe and his sister Sabine, as word reaches Devil’s Rest that a certain lost Marlowe lord has been found… How will Lord Alistair react? And has anyone told Lady Liliana?
The Archaenaut
Set in the early days of the Sollan Empire, this is the story of Captain Cassia Misra of the ISV Defiant, on patrol in the colonial Aglovale system. When a strange ship enters the system, she and her crew find themselves up against an enemy very, very far from home.
The Dragonslayers
Quentin Sharp is a centurion in the Imperial Legions, a soldier, and a simple man. His mission is equally simple: rescue the young Countess Irina Volsenna from the Cielcin and the ruins of her burnng world. Deep behind enemy lines, without backup, Sharp and his men must defeat one of the iron giants of the enemy: a colossal war machine deadly as any battleship.
Fire in the Sky
A Cielcin horde has attacked the peaceful farming colonies on Cordalos, and Iana, a simple peasant girl, can only run and hide. But she is not alone, and when she gets separated from her brother, she must summon up the barest scrap of heroism to defend her home however she can.
The Pits of Emesh
Not all legends are kind to Hadrian Marlowe. This account, written by an anonymous historian, revisits the Halfmortal’s time as a myrmidon fighter in the coliseum on Emesh. A sensational tale of conspiracy and murder, the only question is did it really happen? Did Hadrian Marlowe leave this out of his account? Or are some stories only stories?
The Duelist
A classic tale of two noblemen and a duel at dawn, “The Duelist” offers a bit of lore on the manufacture of highmatter swords, and how a blade that can cut through anything changes the art of fencing forever in a high stakes battle for honor . . . to the death!
Good Intentions
Before she met Hadrian, Valka Onderra Vhad Edda traveled the galaxy, digging through alien ruins on more than a dozen worlds in her efforts to better understand the Quiet, an ancient civilization of advanced, extinct alien xenobites apparently lost to time. Her journeys have brought her to the planet Sadal Suud, where the great clay Giants suffer beneath the whips of mankind. Unable to bear such injustice, Valka must choose not only to act, but to suffer the consequences of action, whatever they may be.
The Night Captain
Commander Halford is the so-called night captain aboard the ISV Tamerlane, the officer in charge of the ship while her primary crew sleeps in cryogenic fugue. But when his ship is attacked at a routine refueling stop off the planet Nagapur, the green officer must rise to the occasion and save his crew. Fortunately for him, he’s not the only person still awake aboard the sleeping vessel. Fortunately for him, he has help in the form of a certain palatine lord, one Hadrian Marlowe himself.